Comics for Beginners

How to Write & Draw Comics

tips for making comics

Coloring in Photoshop – 5 Steps for the Absolute Beginner

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Make sure your line art is in a separate layer from your colors!

Digital coloring can be just as elaborate and detailed as an oil painting. But if you’re just getting started, here is a simple step-by-step guide for getting ready to color your comics in Photoshop.

Step # 1: Scan your line art.

I would recommend scanning in Grayscale and converting to Bitmap after. The resolution should be at least 300 dpi (dots per inch), maybe even 600 dpi. I would also recommend converting your line art to bitmap before you start working on it, to make sure the lines are crisp and clean.

Step # 2: Grayscale to RGB

I know I just told you to convert your line art to Bitmap – But in order to start coloring, you need to convert it back to grayscale, before you can convert it to RGB.

Step # 3: Copy your background layer

Making a copy of your line art layer is a good precaution, in case you screw something up. Click the visibilty of the original layer off and set the layer mode of the copy to “multiply”. This basically transforms your line art layer to the equivalent of clear plastic film that you put on top of your color layer.

Step # 4: Color layer(s)

Make a new layer in “Normal” mode, and make sure to place it under your line art layer.

Step # 5: Start coloring!

That’s it! No more steps really, unless you want to get creative – which you should! But this post is meant to just get you started, so these 5 steps are all you need to know for now, except this:

Bonus step: Save, flatten, save again.

When you have finished coloring your page (and along the way, just to be sure) save your work as a Photoshop file, so you have a back up including all the layers.

Then go to the “layers” menu and click “flatten image”.

If you intend for your comic to be printed, convert the color mode to CMYK and save it as a Tiff file. If it’s for web use or an inkjet printer, keep it in RGB and save it as a Jpeg.

Related post: Tips for Digital Coloring

The Cost of Feeling Inspired

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Something I’ve been thinking about lately, is how much we as artists (in whatever media or form we work in) are dependent on our own mood and mindset to be prolific or even just get a little something done. Call it tenacity or grit or simply lying self talk that allows for us to continue working on something that the rest of the world deems useless. But what if you’re just not feeling inspired?

Here’s the thing: Inspiration is rare. It’s fleeting. You can’t sit around waiting for it, you’ll end up waiting forever!
So here is a list of things you may find helpful, to avoid having to rely on inspiration to be the driving force of your work:
Habit and routine
I have a studio space about a 15 minute bike ride from my house. So every day pretty much without fail, after I drop off my kids to school I just keep going. I’m already up and dressed and halfway to work. Well not quite, but you get the idea. The idea is this: I don’t have to debate myself of whether to stay in and watch Netflix or get to work. I just go. And having other people at the studio makes me feel slightly guilty for the occasional day off, I’m sure that is a factor as well.
Allocated time
And it needs to be time enough to actually make a dent in the work. This depends on the type of work of course. If I only have a few hours, there’s no way I’m going to get any writing done on that novel. I’ll just mindlessly scroll through the document, correct a spelling here or there but it doesn’t feel like progress. For me, I’m probably better off not even opening the document at all, since it always tend to leave me feeling like a s**tty writer.
Deadlines
The best thing you can do to make sure you have exactly the right time for the work, is for someone else to decide when they need it. You know of Parkinson’s Law? Basically it’s like this: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. So if you have a week to do something, that’s how long it will take. If you have a day however, you could probably do it in a day, whatever “it” is. Deadlines are a great way to beat the feeling like you need to be inspired, because you simply don’t have the time to sit around and wait for it.
Preparation
I can easily sit down and sketch a few pages if I already know what’s going to be happening on them, if I already made thumbnails or roughs. A blank page and no script? Not so easy. So mental preparation is in order. The same goes for tools of course. If you spend the first half hour looking for stuff you need and getting the canvas ready, there’s less time to do the actual work. As described in this post, the best productivity hack I can give you is decide the day before what to work on, so you can jump right in.
Shut up your inner critic
You know that voice in our head that tells us it’s a piece of crap we’re working on, that nobody would want it, it’s a waste of time? Yeah, not really helping, is it? Steven Pressfield calls it The Resistance, an almost metaphysical force trying to stop us from what we want and need to do. I sometimes manage to shut that voice up by listening to the same soundtrack over and over. Like telling my brain we are in work mode. I’ve also recently found that Synthwave really put’s me in the zone and makes me keep moving. If I’m drawing, I listen to audiobooks or podcasts, mostly to battle my anxiety/boredom/need-to-check-my-email-or-Facebook-every-5-minutes.
I’d love to know what works for you! Leave a comment below.

Step-by-Step Guide: My Comics Process

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This is my next graphic novel project! Filling in the blanks should be no biggie, right? Well, there’s a little more to it than that.

I recently posted this picture on Instagram and Facebook that got a lot of likes – and a lot of questions! So I thought I’d elaborate a bit on how I actually tackle the creation of a comic or graphic novel. I go into detail with certain elements in my premium 10-video tutorial series, but these are the basic steps I go through every time.

1: Script

Having a finished script before you start drawing increases your chance of actually finishing with about 3000 percent. The first 2 videos of the premium series covers this (and those episodes are free). Sometimes I’ll get a script from another writer but I often work off my own or have to break the story down into pages.

2: Thumbnails

This is little scribbles just to get a grip of the page breakdowns. I don’t neccesarily do it for every page but it can be very helpful. The more I plan before I start drawing, the more smoothly the rest of the process. There is a podcast episode about making those hard choices here.

3: Rough sketches

Once I know sort of what the layout of the page will look like, I can start rough sketching pictures. As you’ll notice, this is bare bones storytelling, just enough for others to make out what is going on. No more, no less. I usually sketch on half pages, not full size. No need for bigger format when I’m not doing details – in fact the smaller format often helps in creating a clear layout.

4: Borders and lettering

After scanning my rough sketches, I put them in an InDesign document. If it’s an issue of a comic, I’ll make seperate 22-page files that stick to the same template. I’ll start by creating a standard border for the entire project and just plunk that in between all the frames. Then I’ll put the lettering in where it needs to go. Please note, that this is not the final document! I can adjust the lettering once I have the finished art. For full breakdown of this process go here.

5: Borders and balloons

Using a print-out of my now lettered rough sketches, I am ready to draw the actual pages. BUT, since I might need my borders and speech balloons in a clean format, I do the boring work of inking that part first. This is what the image I posted on Instagram portrayed – I can see why there was some confusion as to how I actually worked!

After I’ve traced the borders and balloons on the board I intend to do the rest of the artwork on, I scan the whole thing. Why? I’ll explain in step #8.

6: Sketching

Using my rough sketches as a guide, I’ll sketch the pages going into more detail, especially on backgrounds and stuff. A picture might change from my original ideas, but I always stick within the frames I already decided on. There’s a video of that process here.

7: Inking

Using a lightbox I trace my skectched pages on the boards that already has the borders and balloons. I can adjust the images a bit if needed. Sometimes I do painted art and other times I ink with black markers. There’s a video of me inking a page of Thomas Alsop here.

I don’t need to worry about paiting outside the borders in this stage because I’ve already scanned the clean pages with just balloons and borders, and no art.

8: Scanning and clean-up.

Remember when I said I might need the borders clean? This is the step. I used to I scan my inked pages and clean up mistakes where I painted outside the frames or over speech balloons. Now I just use the already scanned borders. I just smack my clean borders over the finished art in Photoshop, turn the opacity down a bit so I can see what I’m doing and adjust the corners. It took me a while to figure this out, because sometimes a scanner will skew things a little bit. But I discovered that if I do a “free transform” and focus on the four outer corners of the borders, the rest will sort itself out.

Once the two layers match up, I’ll select all the white within the frames on the top layer and delete that. Then I turn the opacity of the layer back up to 100% and viola! I now have a layer with nice, clean borders and balloons on top, and whatever mistakes (painting outside the borders) I made are hidden underneath. I flatten the file and export it, usually as a high-res tiff file.

8.1: Coloring (optional)

I’m not gonna go into detail here, but you might want to check out this post on coloring in Photoshop.

9: Repeal and replace!

Admitted, I don’t really call it that. But I do have to go through my already lettered InDesign file and delete all the border blocks and replace my rough sketch with the finished art. Some adjusting to the lettering is usually neccesary but then I have the entire book or issue ready to send to the graphic designer or export as a PDF directly for print.

10: Celebrate

I usually skip this step, honestly. But having typed up this post and seeing how much work goes into creating a graphic novel, I feel like I should make a point of this going forward.

Hopefully this answered some of your questions and gave you a few ideas to implement in your own process. Please share this post if you found it helpful!

 

 

9 Ways to Draw Comics Expressions

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I’ve previously written about the benefits of using a mirror to learn how to draw gestures. But maybe you don’t have the same rubber face that I do. So I put together a little tutorial / study of different facial expressions to use as a reference. Enjoy!

Angry

I imagined myself as an old-school drill instructor yelling at his troops. Notice the wrinkles above and across the nose and the downturned corners of the mouth, even though it is wide open.

Bored

Admittedly this is a pretty exaggareted face I’m making. But notice the raised eybrows and the half-closed eyelids.

Surprised

Notice the wide eyes, raised eyebrows and the way the head is tilted back (creating double chins) almost like it’s trying to get away from whatever just popped up.

Whoa, dude!

This is sort of the same as surprised only more enthusiastic. I imagined myself as a teenager watching another kid do a cool skateboard trick.

Puzzled

Here’s a guy trying to solve a difficult problem, unaware that anyone is watching him. Note that one eyebrow is up and the other is down – a great way to show conflicting emotions. In this case intrigue and frustration.

Who cares?

Again an example of one eyebrow up / one down. Also note the half closed eyelids. This is a variation of bored, but with an audience and showing off an element of cockiness (Hence the crooked smile). This guy wants you to know he is not impressed.

Sulky

A very childish face. Protruding lower lip and forehead makes like the person is thinking; SO unfair I have to clean my room!

Smarmy

Put a Clark Gable moustache on this guy and he’s a self-loving aristocrat or swashbuckler. Notice the upward-turned eyebrows towards the middle, that combined with the smile gives a very smug expression.

Silly

I don’t know when you would ever need to make this face, but I threw it in here in case you ever have to draw a really annoying clown type character. Notice the double chins and stupid grin complete with tongue out that gives away the fact that this guy knows he’s being silly.

In summary, there is a lot of way to vary facial expressions, even within the same emotion (happily surprised vs. shocked). There is a difference in how you would look in private and how you would play to an audience (nobody makes a smarmy face when they’re alone). You can of course experiment with making faces yourself and noticing the wrinkes and changes in expressions. There is a lot more to it than smiley-face emojis!

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One Item To-do List

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I don’t know about you, but I have a to-do list about a mile long. And however many things I check off the list, I never seem to get to the bottom.

That’s why I’ve decided to try out a new approach. A to-do list with just one thing on it: Get started.

You see, procrastination is something that usually kicks in before you even sit down to work on whatever you should be working on. Once I get started, I normally keep going until I have to go pick up my kids or cook dinner. I find that the resistance comes when there are too many choices, too many conflicting tasks.

If you want to get in shape, I sincerely doubt that a complex workout plan is not going to be helpful. You want to make it easy for yourself, get some momentum going. Set a tiny goal like just get on the treadmill every day. Just get on it. And what are you going to do, just stand there? Might as well start moving.

And just as a disclaimer; I don’t know anything about getting in shape. I’m not and never have been in any particularly good shape. That’s not the point. It’s the principle of just getting started and not setting too ambitious goals or have a thousand items on your to-do list. Maybe you just need the one checkbox.

Want more productivity tips? Try giving this podcast episode a listen.